These days, it’s easy to email files of many megabytes, and it’s also easy to find sites that will let you store and share files up to 2GB. However that 2GB limit can be a hard one to get past. So how do you share files that are bigger than 2GB? Here are a few solutions.
As always, we have not necessarily fully tested these services. Do your own research, especially when sharing files that contain sensitive info or when you urgently need to get that big file to your client without any hiccups.
SUGGESTED
JungleDisk.com
Maximum file size is 5GB. Pay for only what you use, there is no maximum. Their Workgroup Edition allows multiple users to be managed under a single account, allowing for specific user permissions. Access can be via a web browser. You can resume large uploads where they left off; not sure about resuming downloads. They have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Cost is $2 per user (not per computer, per user) per month, plus storage and data transfer fees: Storage: $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used
Data Transfer: $0.10 per GB of data uploaded; $0.17 per GB of data downloaded
Requests: $0.01 per 1,000 upload requests; $0.01 per 10,000 download requests
OTHER OPTIONS
Gigashift.com
This company is new; they launched in October 2008, so they’re still ironing out some of the kinks. Send and receive 10GB files. Secure file transfers. Pause and resume file transfers. No monthly fee; you pay for each file you upload (dep on file size, number of people sharing, and how long you want it to be available). Free for <200MB files. All downloads are password-secured; you can send an email with a download link to whomever you want to have access to the file.
Sharefile.com
Uses any web browser (no special software required). You can custom design your Sharefile portal. Business plans allow a max file size of 10GB. Cost is $70/month for 10GB monthly bandwidth and 10GB storage. Pricey, plus 2 downloads of 5GB each uses up your bandwidth for the month.
Mediafire.com
Send and receive 10GB files. All files are SSL encrypted. Price is $7/month for 100GB of uploads and downloads per month, $15/month for 250GB per month, $50/month for 1000GB per month.
They say that to upload files larger than 2GB there are restrictions:
- You must use the basic non-Flash uploader which is available under the “Upload” tab on the main page of MediaFire. Once on the upload tab, click the “Use basic uploader” link which is located right below the green “Upload Files to MediaFire” button.
- You must use a browser that supports uploads of files larger than 2GB. Unfortunately, many commonly used browsers (including IE 7.x, Firefox 3.x, Safari 3.x, and Google Chrome) do not meet this requirement because they do not support uploads of files exceeding a 32-bit signed integer. Out of the browsers that we have tested, only Opera 9.x can upload files larger than 2GB.
Podmailing.com
Now owned by VIPeers.com. Maximum file size here is only 5GB. Recipients receive an email with a link. Interrupted downloads can resume where they left off. Cost is $8/month for the 5GB file size limit and 50GB of storage space.
PEER-TO-PEER FILE SHARING
Fileai.com
Free. This is computer to computer sharing—no server in the “cloud” that stores your files. All data is encrypted during the transfer. Incomplete transfers can be resumed. It works by running a Java Applet in your web browser that automatically connects you to the people that you want to transfer files with. You will need to leave your browser window open while running the Java Applet in order to connect to and transfer files with people using fileai.com. You can share files as large as you like; however don’t forget that the speed for uploading files to the internet tends to be way slower than the speed for downloading files from the internet. So the sending and receiving computers will need to be connected to each other, with the browser windows open, for awhile to transfer a 10GB file.
CAUTION: Fileshaker.com / Filebanker.com / Filesavr.com / Filedropper.com
These all seem to be the same company. They say you can share up to a 10GB file. However there have been reports that this is a scam, and little info can be found on the net as to who this company actually is. I wouldn’t advise you use any of these services without getting more information first.